Twenty-four years ago Friday, the aging flamethrower Nolan Ryan took the mound against the Chicago White Sox, and a series that had seen a lot of bad blood finally cracked.

The bad blood, reportedly dating back three years to a Craig Grebeck home run in 1990, was released when the 46-year-old Ryan plunked 26-year-old Robin Ventura in the arm. Ventura took four steps toward first base before throwing down his helmet and charging the mound.

Ventura obviously did not think the scenario through as he slowed down approaching Ryan, allowing the Hall of Famer to muster Ventura’s head under his arm, as he unleashed repeated blows to Ventura’s head.

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Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez, who was a week removed from surgery on a broken cheekbone, was the first to the rescue. “I didn’t try to go out there and fight,” Rodriguez said. “I went out there to try to separate them.”

Rodriguez proved no match as Ventura’s momentum carried the fight toward second base.

The true saving point of the fight for Ventura came in the form of the White Sox bench.

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According to Ryan, the benches’ arrival was the worst part of the fight as he recalled being on the bottom of the pile of bodies.

“All I remember is that I couldn’t breathe,” Ryan wrote in a biography. “I thought I was going to black out and die, when all of a sudden I see two big arms tossing bodies off of me. It was Bo Jackson. He had come to my rescue, and I’m awful glad he did, because I was about to pass out. I called him that night and thanked him.”

Surprisingly, Ryan was not ejected from the game — Ventura and White Sox manager Gene Lamont were. The Rangers star would go on to retire 12 of the next 13 batters to pick up the 5-2 victory. This would pan out to be Ryan’s last MLB season as well as the only batter he would hit all season.

To this day, Ventura downplays the event, saying, “He gave me a couple of noogies, but that was about it.”

Ryan would go on to say, “I have nothing against Robin Ventura. … The next time I face him, it won’t even cross my mind.”

However, the two would not speak again until 2012, when Ventura, who was managing the White Sox at the time, visited Arlington, Texas, with his team to play Ryan’s Rangers. Ryan, who was the Rangers CEO at the time, met Ventura before the game and wished him luck.

There might not be hard feelings, but the fight goes down as one of the most iconic brawls the baseball world has ever seen.